Looking back as it zooms through interplanetary space, less than a month into its 445-million mile, five-year journey to the gas giant Jupiter, NASA's spacecraft Juno captured a portrait of the Earth and moon.
It might not look like much, but that larger white dot is the Earth and the smaller dot to the right is the moon. Juno was 6 million miles away at the time.
SEE ALSO: Jupiter Probe to Explore How Planets Formed
"This is a remarkable sight people get to see all too rarely," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "This view of our planet shows how Earth looks from the outside, illustrating a special perspective of our role and place in the universe. We see a humbling yet beautiful view of ourselves."
It's hard not to be reminded of Carl Sagan's poignant "Pale Blue Dot" quote after the Voyager 1 probe skewed around in 1990 to see the dot of our planet, swamped in the depths of the Cosmos.
But for me personally, it's a reminder of the opening passage of a tune by one of my favorite bands:
Somewhere out there in the vast nothingness of space,
Somewhere far away in space and time,
Staring upward at the gleaming stars in the obsidian sky,
We’re marooned on a small island, in an endless sea
Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape,
But tonight, on this small planet, on earth
We’re going to rock civilization...
– Lyrics from "Prelude/Slam," PendulumIt's when I see photos like this, everything instantly snaps into perspective. To paraphrase Sagan, everything we've ever known and loved exists on that small dot. Everything.
Isn't it about time we venture off this tiny spit of sand? There's a lot of galaxy out there for us to explore...
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
DANCING NEBULA
When the gods dance...
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Juno Looks Back, Photographs Earth-Moon System
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Mario Portals Test 3
The video above has been making the rounds for a while now; it's a safe bet that most viewers have assumed it to be yet another made up mash-up and nothing more. I believe Dorkly was the first to make that joke.
But upon further investigation, turns out the footage is actually proof of concept of a very real game. Mari0 is not a rom hack or the like but an original title created in Löve2D. Upon completion, it'll include levels from SMB plus part 2/Love Levels, along with original levels that have "portaly puzzles" and tell an original story.
Furthermore, simultaneous multiplayer will be supported, though the most intriguing promise is how the "level editor will be embedded in the game so you can edit the level while you play". As for when it comes out, the creator has take a firm 'it's ready when it's ready' stance.
The business legacy of Mr. Jobs
Revered by many, hated by some, but respected by most, the indisputable fact remains that Steve Jobs is the most successful business leader of his generation and quite possibly of all time. The numbers are impressive in themselves but the most remarkable aspect of his success is how it was achieved. Though he remains at Apple, the end of his tenure as CEO is the end of an era and an opportunity to try and grasp just exactly what it is he did and what lessons there are for all of us "trying to make a dent in the universe."
The 41 year old Steve Jobs who arrived back at Apple in 1996 had already had a lifetime's worth of business experience. Due to the success of the Apple II personal computer he had a multi-million fortune by the age of 25. Doubtless he felt that he could do no wrong. The next fifteen years however were a series of tumultuous mistakes and betrayals that saw Steve being thrown out of the company he created and suffering significant failures at Pixar, the computer graphics division he bought from George Lucas, and NeXT, the business computer company he created. These were crucial experiences in Steve's transition from entrepreneur to business leader.
Failure
Neither company could make a profit and in both cases the problem was hardware. Pixar were involved in the creation of very high-end rendering machines for their animations but they weren't selling any and the cost was killing them, or rather Steve, since they were operating solely off his bank account. His pride couldn't let them fail. Eventually Steve stops the hardware development, fires half the workforce, keeping only the Renderman (CG rendering software) programmers and crucially John Lassiter's animation department - the only department making any money.At the same time the beautifully designed NeXT Cube computer was simply too expensive for individuals to buy and could not compete with the likes of Sun Microsystems and IBM in the enterprise market. In a devastating blow The COO of NeXT tried to sell the company from under Steve's feet to Sun. It didn't come off but the writing was on the wall. NeXT closed their manufacturing plant, losing 300 workers, and became a small software company, licensing the excellent NeXT operating system that they had developed in tandem with the hardware. This was the lowest point and by 1993 Steve Jobs had virtually retired to be with his new young family at the age of 38.
Big Bucks
John Lasseter at Pixar was recognized as one of the finest animators in the business and had won several awards for adverts and short films. Jeffrey Katzenburg at Disney tried to lure him to the "Magic Kingdom" but Lasseter knew he would get buried at Disney and wanted to stay with his team. Eventually Disney agreed a deal for Pixar to produce three full-length animated movies for US$27 million each with Pixar getting 12.5% of gross - a surprisingly poor deal - but Pixar and Jobs knew no better at the time. The first Toy Story script was rejected out-of-hand but Lasseter eventually turned it around to Disney's liking and by 1995 the film had been made. Steve actually had little to do with the running of Pixar at that stage but turned up at a preview screening to see Disney's Pocahontas and Toy Story back to back. He very quickly realized what the team at Pixar had achieved and saw how the deal with Disney could turn into something very big indeed.
Jobs swiftly took over the reins at Pixar and brought on board a CFO with Wall Street credibility to prepare for an IPO (Initial Public Offering) on the Stock Exchange. It seemed a ridiculous idea - Pixar had never made a profit - but Jobs was convinced that Toy Story was going to be a massive hit and timed the IPO for a week after the film's release. Sure enough the film opened at $28 million and went on to gross $127 million. The IPO was a massive success and Steve Jobs was suddenly worth $1.5 billion. Controversially, most of the Pixar workers got nothing. Jobs went back to Disney and demanded a new 50/50 deal for the next two films - and got it. Incredibly, in 2005 when Disney boss Michael Eisner was finally fired, Pixar and Jobs engineered a "reverse-takeover" of Disney Studios that cost Disney $7.5 billion and put Pixar's Ed Catmull and John Lasseter in charge. Steve Jobs remains Disney's largest shareholder.
Apple 2.0
Apple in 1996 was in a poor state. Windows 95, Mac clones, an ageing operating system, a lacklustre roster of products and an equally uninspiring CEO meant that Q4 1996 was one of the worst financial quarters ever. Uncharacteristically Jobs had refused to take up the offer of a hostile takeover of the company by Oracle's Larry Ellison in 1995 but when Apple went shopping for a new modern operating system Steve managed to convince the board to buy NeXT for $400 million and he became an "informal advisor" to the CEO Gil Amelio. While Amelio stumbled and mumbled through his presentation at the WWDC of January 1997, Steve Jobs ended the developer conference with a remarkable one hour Q&A session in which the roots of everything we see today from Apple are plain to see. Within months Amelio had been sacked and Jobs agreed to take the position of "Interim CEO." Apparently he was concerned about being CEO of two public companies but one suspects that there were deeper psychological effects at play. It's as if Jobs felt he had to earn his place at Apple again and not just be handed the keys.
Steve launched himself into Apple's turnaround with extraordinary energy. A deal was done with Microsoft to end all hostilities, guaranteeing MS Office for Mac for five years and securing a symbolic $150 million share deal. Jobs famously remarked that the PC wars were over and that Microsoft had won. This deftly stopped the constant market-share comparisons and allowed Apple room to get quietly profitable. A new advertising company was engaged and a series of cool black and white photos of iconic people with the slogan "Think Different" were produced to play on the notion of Apple as the maverick underdog capable of changing the world. Jobs interviewed every product team and asked them to justify themselves. Gil Amelio had got the number of Apple projects from 350 down to 50 - Jobs got it down to 10. Life at Apple quickly changed - smoking was banned and a fantastic new cafeteria created. A policy of absolute secrecy concerning product development was introduced and strictly enforced. Porting the NeXTSTEP operating system to the Mac platform began and a product strategy consisting of only four segments was devised: Pro Desktop, Pro Portable, Consumer Desktop, Consumer Portable.
iMac
A quiet Brit, Jonathan Ives was working on a side project at Apple for a network computer. He wasn't happy and wanted to leave but Steve Jobs was impressed with his ideas and sensibilities and made him Head of Industrial Design. They worked closely together on the design of the "Internet Mac" for the consumer desktop segment and this became the original Bondi Blue iMac. It was launched in the same room as the original Mac was 14 years earlier in an occasion heavy with symbolism and emotion, and the clear message that Apple was back and reconnected to its roots. It was of course a massive success.
All Steve's experience and the lessons learned in the previous years had come to this point, and from this point the seeds of all Apple's subsequent successes were sown. He had seen a talent in Jon Ives and immediately put him in a position to exploit that talent. They worked on a design that was unique yet true to the physical essence of the computer, which of course at that point was the CRT inside. They developed a new plastic composition to take the heat of the processor while allowing them translucency and color. The machine had a cute face and a rounded form to make the emotional connection that was so important for the success of the first Mac but had consequently been lost at Apple. They also worked hard to ensure that the machine was actually affordable, in part by removing a bunch of legacy connectors and the floppy disc drive. A move that shocked the tech community but delighted customers - a common theme to come. The iMac was also noteworthy for introducing the mass market to USB, a connection technology invented by Intel that was frankly dying. With Apple committing to it as their only peripheral connector on consumer machines there was an explosion of activity by peripheral manufacturers wanting to standardize on USB. Here was a new phenomenon - a vast ecosystem of subsidiary manufacturers emerging around the popularization of a standard.
A few months later the G3 PowerMac was introduced in a new Bondi Blue plastic case, the iMac now came in five fruit colors and the brightly colored iBook was launched. The share price rocketed and in two years the turnaround had been achieved. Steve now entered what might be called the visionary phase at Apple.
Millennium
At the beginning of the new century a number of significant things occurred; Steve now felt able to call himself CEO, the first iteration of Mac OSX was released, the "Digital Hub" strategy was conceived and the first Apple retail store was opened. The last two are particularly interesting in that they flew against all the received wisdom of the time. Everybody was obsessed with the Internet. PC's would become simple "thin clients" to remote servers and all computers would be bought on-line. Jobs disagreed vehemently. In fact he had to disagree because if that was indeed the future then Apple was undoubtedly doomed. Even with all the talk about market-share being irrelevant Apple was still stuck at 5 percent and needed a strategy to push consumers to switch from PC's to Macs. Steve positioned the Mac as the center of your "digital lifestyle," connected to your still cameras, video cameras and music players. Apple started to produce software to allow mere mortals to edit their photos, video or make a DVD. Apple also noticed, a little late in fact, how the craze for downloading music from Napster or from your own CD collection was snowballing. iTunes was created in just a few months to allow you to rip from CD's and organize your music library.
Shops and Pods
Jobs felt that although they were now making a superior product, PC users simply wouldn't get over their inertia and buy a Mac unless they saw and felt how well designed they were and how easy to use. The retail strategy was a risky and expensive one and Steve knew it. He drafted in retail heavy-hitters from Gap and Target and built a dummy store in a warehouse to get the meticulous design exactly right. At the same time an engineer, Tony Fadell, was trying to sell a small mp3 music player that he had invented and nobody was interested. Jobs immediately saw the potential and nine months later the beautifully designed white iPod with a unique click-wheel interface and a huge capacity was launched. It was quite expensive but nobody cared. It was exactly what people wanted for their new digital music collections and it became the new Walkman, selling massively across the world.
Truth be told Jobs and Apple were shocked by the numbers but as per usual they wasted no time in exploiting the phenomenon and all the logical steps that followed. An iTunes for Windows, a whole range of iPods and eventually the iTunes music store. Steve's experience with Disney was particularly useful in persuading the record companies that they really had no option but to offer their wares through the iTunes store. This symbiosis of hardware and software that only Apple could do was finally the magic combination that brought Apple products to the attention of the whole world. Mac market share began to increase and the retail stores started to become the most profitable pieces of real estate in the world. From 2004 on, Apple's profits rose exponentially.
Intel
By June 2005 the transition to OSX was complete with 10.4 proving to be the most solid and popular release. Apple had a problem however, the PowerPC processors it was using, made by IBM, were too power hungry and hot to be used in the smaller and lighter portable laptops that were becoming such an important market segment. In addition they were perceived as slow by the tech community. Jobs revealed to a shocked audience that they had been writing an Intel compatible version of OSX in parallel all this time and that Apple would be moving to an all Intel line up. It was a masterstroke. Life became much easier for developers wishing to port to the Mac and in any case you could run Windows on it if you really had to. Another psychological barrier to Mac ownership had been removed.
iPhone
The iPod had re-kindled Job's interest in the possibility of a hand-held computer. He hated the PDA's of the time and had famously killed the Newton on his return to Apple. As early as 2003 Steve was playing with a handheld touchscreen that some of the engineers had programmed with the inertial scrolling and bounce that we see today. At some point there came a eureka moment when Jobs saw that the "killer app" of a hand-held could be as a phone. In fact you could make the easiest phone possible. The existing mobile phones were very poor in how their functions were accessed and most people just used them for calls. Once again Jobs saw a unique opportunity and the next few years were spent developing the hardware required, creating a port of Mac OSX to work on that hardware, and negotiating with the mobile carriers to ensure that the iPhone experience was unique. Plus of course in typical Steve Jobs style getting a better deal than any other handset maker.
The iPhone was launched in January 2007 and Jobs understood completely the significance of the event. If Apple got this right, then rather than fighting a decades-old battle of Mac verses PC they would be creating an entirely new computing market, potentially dominating it for years to come. The launch of course was an extraordinary success and again Apple were quick to iterate all the logical steps that followed that success - the App Store and eventually in 2010 the iPad. What's remarkable about the iPad is that although the operating system is exactly the same, the form factor and the context in which it is used have created yet another unique market segment that Apple continues to dominate.
Health and Legacy
It's no secret that since 2003 Steve Jobs has faced severe health problems. It's no secret either that these problems seems to have taken a dark turn since 2008 culminating in his resignation last week. An event timed to perfection in typical Jobsian style at the point when Apple briefly became the most valuable quoted company in the world. In many ways the past few years have seen Steve preparing Apple for a future without him. Tim Cook has been with Apple for 15 years and Steve's second in command since 2004 - there was never any doubt of his succession. Steve has instigated an internal "University" for the numerous Vice Presidents of the company run by an ex-Yale business professor to teach them the "Apple way." In one of his final acts as CEO he obtained planning permission for a quite extraordinary new head office campus building that should meet Apple's needs for at least a decade.
Lessons
So what can Steve Jobs teach us about success? Well there really is no secret - the usual clichės apply - passion, vision and focus. In Jobs however these qualities are turned up to 11 and certainly in his early career caused much friction and upset to those around him. As some close to him have said, in later life he learned how to "ride the beast within" and become an extraordinary leader. Steve himself said, "you have to have a crazy passion for what you do because without it you will never put up with what's necessary for success". Steve is also famous for maintaining a vision of how he believes the world will be in five, ten or even twenty years time and planning accordingly, "we try to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is". Apple is an extraordinarily focused company and this of course comes from the top. Job's obsession with the slightest detail is legendary and Apple prototypes many more products that are rejected than are ever produced, "in a way we are prouder of the hundreds of products we throw out than the few we make."
In a few years Apple will very likely become America's first trillion dollar company and that will be due in large part to the "Apple DNA" that Steve Jobs has created, in the end his greatest triumph.
HP leaves TouchPad Go suppliers adrift with parts for 100K tablets
HP leaves TouchPad Go suppliers adrift with parts for 100K tablets
Posted: 30 Aug 2011 08:08 AM PDT
Sources tell the site that suppliers are in negotiations with HP to figure out some sort of solutions of for their now useless supply inventory. HP Taiwan says it won’t abandon the suppliers completely, but it’s unclear what exactly the company will be able to offer as recompense. The sources add that HP’s headquarters in the US still haven’t communicated to the company’s Taiwanese arm about what to do.
Production for the TouchPad Go was supposed to start at the end of this quarter.
Making amends with these suppliers will be another major expense for HP, which will likely lose hundreds of millions over the shutdown of its WebOS hardware. All of those $99 TouchPads will surely come back to bite HP, especially since the tablets have an estimated build cost of around $300. The company also spent a pretty penny on the TouchPad’s marketing campaign, which continued running days after the tablet was officially discontinued.
Is Science Just a Matter of Faith?
Is Science Just a Matter of Faith?
Look at these books:
I see a pattern emerging...
If you don’t know who these authors are, you’d be forgiven for thinking these books came from the Bible Studies section of the bookstore. But in fact, these are science books, most of them written by the foremost thinkers in their respective fields, and many of them proud atheists. All of these books are about pure science. They are not about creationism, intelligent design, or even the relationship between science and religion generally. They do not attempt some religio-scientific synthesis. These books are not about the common ground. They are about science pure and simple, and specifically science’s answers to the great questions: what is the universe made of, where did the universe come from, where do we come from? They are some of the best-selling pop science books about physics, math, and evolution. And all of them inexplicably invoke God and the divine in their titles.And this is just a sample of all of hte science books that do this. Walk through the science section of your local bookstore, or browse Amazon, and you’ll find many more science books with the same pseudo-religious titles. Why? Why do pop-sci book authors and publishers do this? Can’t they just sell the science book with science?
Teach the Controversy
To answer this question, I think it helps to look at the opposite situation. Why did creationists choose to cloak religion in the language of science when they invented Intelligent Design? I understand that the goal was to get creationism (and religion) into public schools. But why did they feel it was necessary to recast religious belief specifically as a scientific theory using all of the accompanying scientific language? Why try to get religion in to schools by wrapping it up as part of social studies, culture theory, or literature? Why did it have to be science? Why attempt create a scientific theory called Intelligent Design when they knew full well that the scientific community would never be fooled?
Because they were hoping to invest their particular Christianity with the certainty and authority of science. If creationism could pass as science, then schools could teach it–creationism according to fundamentalist Christianity–uncritically as a fact they way they teach science. And this would create an entire population of students receptive to the political and cultural narratives that are based on religion. This is also why creationists are comfortable with “teaching the controversy.” It implies there is a scientific controversy in which creationism/ID is the leading alternative theory to evolution. Teaching Intelligent Design, and teaching the “controversy”, expands the authority of religion in the secular domain that is traditionally the province of science
And that’s the key–authority. Creationists we’re trying to invest creationism with the authority of science so that creationists could speak with authority on matters of science, such as evolution and global warming. And that authority is substantial. Science speaks with unchallenged authority on most topics relating to the natural world.
With some notable exceptions.
Who Says What Science Says?
On the Big Questions of cosmology and biology, the questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything (as another famous atheist put it), religion has very simple, very comforting, and very accessible answers. God created the heavens and the Earth, He created us in his image and that’s we we’re so smart and animals are food, and one day He’ll come back and we’ll live together in paradise. For more details, inquire within.
Of course, science has answers to these Big Questions questions too. And that is precisely what these books and others are about. They are about science’s answers to the questions of the origins of the universe, the evolution of man, and the fundamental nature of the cosmos. And most non-scientists want to know these answers. Unfortunately, the actual scientific answers involve things like wave equations and quantum electrodynamics and molecular biology that very few non-scientists can ever hope to understand. “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Richard Feynman was including himself when he said that, which is disconcerting given how many books he wrote on that very subject.
Consider how science looks to the layperson, the average citizen who never progressed beyond high school math. These scientific theories–these scientific truths–are extremely dense and esoteric. To them, the theories are unknowable in their native scientific and mathematical forms. These theories are written in their own arcane language with their own unique symbology. For most people, this:
is indistinguishable from this:
In both cases, the layperson needs an interpreter. The fact is that it takes years of dedicated study before scientific truth in its truest, mathematical and symbolic forms can be understood. The rest of us rely on experts to explain it, someone who has seen and understood the truth and can dumb it down for us in a language we can understand.
How Do We Know The Science We Know?
And therein lies the big problem for science and scientists. For most people, science is really a matter of trusting the expert who tells it to us and believing what they tell us. Trust and belief. Faith. Not understanding. How can we understand science, if we can’t understand the language of science? Feynman said, “Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.” He also said, “To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature.” That’s one of the great popularizers of science telling you that without a strong background in postgraduate horrific math and an active imagination, you’ll never really understand what science has to say about the deep truths of nature the way a scientist does. All we can get is the scientist’s interpretation of what the equations and the theory mean. There is simply no other way to apprehend the concepts. Without the math, you learn science by taking what scientists say on faith. You don’t know that Schroedinger’s equation is a scientific fact, you believe it is.
If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. We don’t practice the scientific method. We don’t rationally consider the evidence presented for a theory. We don’t learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were? (See also: The Decline Effect is Stupid.)
Can You Trust A Scientist?
There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. If this is what it takes for people to accept scientific truths as truths, then so be it. But ask yourself, if an economist or a drug company told you about certain facts about free markets or psychopharmacology, would you believe them? Or are physicists on physics more credible than economists on economics? Because if they are, you are admitting that the credibility of the speaker plays a role in what you will accept as scientific truth.
And on that basis, all the weirdness of science–the quantum entanglement, 11-dimensional string theory, the evolution of protozoa into dinosaurs and humans, etc., i.e. those things that contradict our experience of the world as perceived through our senses–appears less credible, and more incredible, than religion. Religion presents a very understandable, easy to learn story. There’s hardly any matrix algebra in Genesis. Furthermore, religion has a lot of people speaking on its behalf. A lot of people make a living explaining what religion says about life, the universe, and everything. Religion makes it easy.
Who is an Authority?
Science can’t speak for itself, it needs people to do that. Science speaks the same way philosophy, art, and religion speak. Through people. Science does not make statements. People make statements about science. Those statements can be false even if the science is true. There is no scientific truth about these difficult questions that laypeople can grasp, there are statements made by people about those scientific truths. But those statements can be false, because those statements are not themselves science, but rather are necessary interpretations of science and therefore are fraught with all of the problems that plague statements made by people on every other matter. The Schroedinger equation shown above is true. But Wikipedia’s statement about what the Schroedinger equation means may be may not be true. It may be a generalization, or an oversimplification, or it may have some of it wrong.
For most of the population to know science, someone has to explain it. And the person explaining has to be believed. Their success in explaining it turns on their credibility as an expert and an authority, which turns on techniques of rhetoric, argumentation, and persuasion. It also turns on structures of power and consent. Framing and context. Who decides who is an expert? Who decides which expert will tell us about science, and in what way? A cultural authority, not a scientific one. The publishing company, the TV network, the university, the school, the State. Entities who have a vested interest in what you learn about science, and what you don’t.
The authors of these books need to establish themselves in the eyes of the general public as authorities, as science experts rather than scientists, regardless of the fact that they are already regarded as such by their peers and the scientific community. The books are not sold to their peers or the scientific community. They are being sold to non-scientists to be accepted as the truth. To be believed.
Turf Wars
But belief is religion’s turf. Religion has created, refined, and mastered the rhetoric of belief. And religion has historically spoken with exclusive authority on the questions of the origin of man and the universe for all but the last 100 years or so. Regardless of our religious beliefs as individuals, as a society we have accepted that the answer to these questions will have a religious dimension or they will come in a religious form. Because laypeople take in science through the same apparatus of faith and belief that they take in religion, when a scientist wants to speak credibly on these questions to a layperson, he is intentionally or unintentionally usurping the role of religion. Successful science books code via the title that the scientific truths described therein are of a religious order, as having the same mystical and divine importance that religious answers to these questions do. To be believed on the big questions, the science expert has to cloak his book in the semiotics of religion. More precisely, for these books to speak effectively and persuasively on the origins of the man and the universe they need to vest themselves with the authority that religion has on those very topics.
The titles are not about communicating science or religion. They are about claiming and signaling authority. For the book and for the author. “I can be trusted and believed on the question of the origin of the universe.” By invoking God and the divine in the title, the books are signalling that they have the authority to speak scientifically to the fundamental questions that formerly only religion had the authority to address. It is an attempt to elevate science to the order of the divine, so that scientists can speak with the authority of religion on matters that our culture has historically considered to be the sole province of religion.
For most of us, science isn’t truth. Science is the belief in the authority of scientists.
"Pastabagel writes that the actual scientific answers to the questions of the origins of the universe, the evolution of man, and the fundamental nature of the cosmos involve things like wave equations and quantum electrodynamics and molecular biology that very few non-scientists can ever hope to understand and that if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. When Richard Fenyman wrote, 'I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics,' he was including himself which is disconcerting given how many books he wrote on that very subject. The fact is that it takes years of dedicated study before scientific truth in its truest, mathematical and symbolic forms can be understood. The rest of us rely on experts to explain it, someone who has seen and understood the truth and can dumb it down for us in a language we can understand. And therein lies the big problem for science and scientists. For most people, science is really a matter of trusting the expert who tells it to us and believing what they tell us. Trust and belief. Faith. Not understanding. How can we understand science, if we can't understand the language of science? 'We don't learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were?'"
Gavin Mackey's Pokemon Redesigns Will Haunt Your Nightmares [Art]
Aug 12th 2011 By: Brian Warmoth
Somewhere between the original, manga-looking Pokémon that we all know and love and the bigger, shinier
fantasy re-imaginings that we've also seen, lies Gavin Mackey's vision for the super-powered critters. In Mackey's art, they take an insidious turn toward resembling Renée French subjects or that creepy baby in David Lynch's Eraserhead.Mackey was taking requests. Unfortunately for you late-comers, his commissions, taken through his deviantART account, seem to be closed for the time being. He still has his finished pieces posted in his gallery there, however.
He's made a Gastly, Bulbasaur and Charmander, as well as SpongeBob SquarePants' pal Patrick Star and Yoda. These paintings may very well change how you use your Poké Balls for the rest of your Poké combat career, but they are rather mesmerizing, so go have a look. And if after doing so you can no longer look at Mew without thinking of Dr. Evil's hairless cat, don't say we didn't warn you.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Watch Out For These 4 Keyloggers For Mac
Watch Out For These 4 Keyloggers For Mac
posted on August 29, 2011 by J. Lockhart
Just know that the first purpose of this article is to let you know that this enemy actually exists, and the second purpose is to help you know your enemy by name.
Spector Pro [Snow Leopard]
As a product of SpectorSoft, Spector Pro markets itself as a way to check in on the kids or make sure that your employees are staying on task. It even prides itself with its ability to block websites and specific contacts on instant messaging. However, we all know that this doesn’t mean people wouldn’t use it for malicious reasons. (As a note, the website also has some sketchy user testimonials anyway.)
Besides its basic run-of-the-mill keylogging methods, Spector Pro forwards all emails, transferred files, and screenshots to its primary operator (read: stalker). Also, like most keyloggers, the software will likely run in stealth mode if it is being used on you, so just keep that in mind. However, at the price of $99, the perpetrator would likely use it only if they had serious intentions.
SniperSpy [Snow Leopard]
SniperSpy is one of three spy-related pieces of software produced by Retina-X Studios. Once again, we have the typical explanation of “Watch your children!” and “Watch your employees!”. However, in addition to its basic functions of screenshot capturing, location mapping (based on the current IP) and keylogging, SniperSpy allows its operator to view everything that you are doing totally live in a VNC-like fashion.
Basically, as you are typing out your romantic messages to your hypothetical forbidden lover, your spouse could be watching you as it happens. Another feature allows for operators to send the computer user an onscreen message – perhaps something classic like, “All your base are belong to us.”
Aobo Keylogger [Snow Leopard & Lion]
Aobo claims that you can use the software to “spy and discover the truth” and “get back a stolen Mac”. This is perfectly fine and seemingly honest, but there is always the chance someone might have ulterior motives while using it. The website for this software is a little iffy, so just keep in mind its users could be equally so.
The software comes in two varieties – standard and pro – and both of them collect the standard information that any keylogger would. However, the professional version is noted for its ability to record passwords that are typed in-browser, and it claims to have been the first keylogger for Mac to do so. All logs (including screenshots, keystrokes, and websites) can be sent to the operator’s email or FTP.
Amac KeyLogger [Snow Leopard & Lion]
Much like the other monitoring programs mentioned in this article, Amac Keylogger requires the operator to install the software on the actual computer itself. Granted, this could always possibly be done remotely by a well-versed operator, but in the meantime, just reconsider who regularly plugs flash drives into your computer.
Amac Keylogger functions just as you would expect it would – it watches you do whatever you do, sending information of your activities to the mystery man behind another screen. Although it displays itself as employee monitoring software, it is easily exploitable. If you download it once, it monitors all user accounts on the Mac in question, and it always will open up in stealth mode on the user’s computer. Also, much like Aobo, the professional version of this software can record passwords.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that Apple does subtly protect its users from these Internet demons anyway, but if you want a basic method to combat keyloggers yourself, you should take a look at this MUO article – 4 Ways To Protect Yourself Against Keyloggers. Besides this, remember to always update your OS to prevent unintentional installation, and don’t be surprised that some people do not. Take this example – a close friend of mine who works primarily with Macs once knew someone who hadn’t done so since the day that they bought it!
Watch Out For These 4 Keyloggers For Mac
Watch Out For These 4 Keyloggers For Mac
posted on August 29, 2011 by J. Lockhart
Just know that the first purpose of this article is to let you know that this enemy actually exists, and the second purpose is to help you know your enemy by name.
Spector Pro [Snow Leopard]
As a product of SpectorSoft, Spector Pro markets itself as a way to check in on the kids or make sure that your employees are staying on task. It even prides itself with its ability to block websites and specific contacts on instant messaging. However, we all know that this doesn’t mean people wouldn’t use it for malicious reasons. (As a note, the website also has some sketchy user testimonials anyway.)
Besides its basic run-of-the-mill keylogging methods, Spector Pro forwards all emails, transferred files, and screenshots to its primary operator (read: stalker). Also, like most keyloggers, the software will likely run in stealth mode if it is being used on you, so just keep that in mind. However, at the price of $99, the perpetrator would likely use it only if they had serious intentions.
SniperSpy [Snow Leopard]
SniperSpy is one of three spy-related pieces of software produced by Retina-X Studios. Once again, we have the typical explanation of “Watch your children!” and “Watch your employees!”. However, in addition to its basic functions of screenshot capturing, location mapping (based on the current IP) and keylogging, SniperSpy allows its operator to view everything that you are doing totally live in a VNC-like fashion.
Basically, as you are typing out your romantic messages to your hypothetical forbidden lover, your spouse could be watching you as it happens. Another feature allows for operators to send the computer user an onscreen message – perhaps something classic like, “All your base are belong to us.”
Aobo Keylogger [Snow Leopard & Lion]
Aobo claims that you can use the software to “spy and discover the truth” and “get back a stolen Mac”. This is perfectly fine and seemingly honest, but there is always the chance someone might have ulterior motives while using it. The website for this software is a little iffy, so just keep in mind its users could be equally so.
The software comes in two varieties – standard and pro – and both of them collect the standard information that any keylogger would. However, the professional version is noted for its ability to record passwords that are typed in-browser, and it claims to have been the first keylogger for Mac to do so. All logs (including screenshots, keystrokes, and websites) can be sent to the operator’s email or FTP.
Amac KeyLogger [Snow Leopard & Lion]
Much like the other monitoring programs mentioned in this article, Amac Keylogger requires the operator to install the software on the actual computer itself. Granted, this could always possibly be done remotely by a well-versed operator, but in the meantime, just reconsider who regularly plugs flash drives into your computer.
Amac Keylogger functions just as you would expect it would – it watches you do whatever you do, sending information of your activities to the mystery man behind another screen. Although it displays itself as employee monitoring software, it is easily exploitable. If you download it once, it monitors all user accounts on the Mac in question, and it always will open up in stealth mode on the user’s computer. Also, much like Aobo, the professional version of this software can record passwords.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that Apple does subtly protect its users from these Internet demons anyway, but if you want a basic method to combat keyloggers yourself, you should take a look at this MUO article – 4 Ways To Protect Yourself Against Keyloggers. Besides this, remember to always update your OS to prevent unintentional installation, and don’t be surprised that some people do not. Take this example – a close friend of mine who works primarily with Macs once knew someone who hadn’t done so since the day that they bought it!